It's absolutely wild just how fast NAND prices have fallen over these last few years. It's one of the few areas in the PC gaming space where the tech development and cost seem to be continually improving year-on-year. Yet, Interestingly, it's the PCIe 4.0 arena that's getting the most love and attention, despite 5.0 SSDs leading the way in terms of sequential performance. In fact, arguably, some of the best SSDs for gaming right now are 4.0 drives. They're cheaper, cooler, and perform just as well as their high-speed sequential counterparts.
Western Digital's latest WD Black SN7100 is a fine example of that exact ethos. It is, on the surface, a simple enough drive. It's PCIe 4.0, it has Kioxia 218-layer BiCS8 TLC NAND, and the company's Sandisk Polaris 3 A101 controller (the same found in the WD Blue SN5000 I reviewed late last year). Following on with modern trends, WD's also dropped the dedicated DRAM cache (honestly, you really don't need it anymore) and gone for a single-sided drive design, making it far more compatible with the likes of laptops, motherboards, consoles, and smaller form factor systems.
